Succession

Where the river once ran,
the black soil sprouts birch.
Scattered among them, a few
slender striped maple. Waist high,
a miniature beech dangles its handful
of nuts over the old banks.

One thousand, two thousand years,
the land changes slowly, at its leisure.
The last few inches of stone go,
the high side of the falls
mosses over, the old channel
silts up, an oxbow mire:
then peat, alder, a few slim birches.

Maple and beech attain
fat men's girth, rotting
at the edges, towering
where birches fled, dropping
the vanguard seed.

But for blade and match,
a few generations would erase us.
A squirrel could travel again, tree by tree,
from the St. Lawrence to the Mohawk.
The pine seedling grandpa nursed already
threatens the foundation, chokes
the drains with blind root.

The forest takes the space it needs,
takes time, year by year, bark
creeping over fire-scars, ingesting
spikes and barbed wire, shattering slabs
of burned barn floors, growing by millimeters.

Patient as China,
it trickles through hedgerows,
encroaching on the house.
Raindrops drip from leaftip to tip.
from treetop to carport, a pizzicato
spatter. Roots grope down
to tap the well.

Dale Hobson